This beer an opaque copperish orange with a one finger light tan head which left a small and thin lacing on my glass.

The nose had aromas of toffee, roasted malts, vanilla, dark dried fruits like prunes and a hint of whiskey.

The taste starts off with the sweetness of caramel and dark dried fruits then in the middle you get some layers of vanilla, oak, and whiskey, near the end of the taste I picked up some of the dry bitterness of the hops were there.

This beer had medium slick body with a very nice warmth from the alcohol which lingered a while. It was a sipper for sure and a mighty fine Barleywine, wish I had more!

On the Label: In a rock ‘n roll collaboration 2 of Europe’s most extreme, experimental brewers have combined forces, talents and ideas to produce this innovative ale.

Uniting inspiration, ingredients and people from around the world this beer was brewed and aged at BrewDog in Scotland.

This rebellious beer is partially aged in oak Speyside whiskey barrels and partially aged in stainless steel, combines an ale yeast and a champagne yeast and showcases a single hop variety.

Produced and Bottled by Brewdog Ltd. Fraserburg, Scotland.

From their website: Welcome along to the BrewDog label workshop. We thought we would give you a little look behind the scenes at the early stages and concepts of designing a products packaging. You know all about this beer and how it is made, we hope you would like to know a little bit about the thought process behind the packaging as well. Let’s go deeper into the rabbit hole and deeper into the innermost workings of the BrewDog machine.

Firstly the collaboration beer now has a name. The 12.5% Barley Wine which BrewDog and Mikkeller joined forces to make in December 2008 will be called Devine Rebel. It has now fully fermented and tastes amazing! It is being partially oak cask aged, 25% of the beer is ageing in Speyside whisky barrels and the other 75% is ageing in one of our conditioning tanks. We wanted to get some oak flavours and tiny hints of whisky but we wanted to make this a minor part of the beers flavour profile which is why only some of it is ageing in oak. The barley wine ageing in the oak and the barley wine ageing in the tank will be re-united in April 2009 and bottled.

You can see the logo with the BrewDog dog appearing on the right of Mikkell.

With the packaging, what we wanted to incorporate visually into the label was key elements of both brewer’s strong branding. The Mikkeller and BrewDog logo are both prominent, we also added a fun tweak to the Mikkeller logo for the collaboration with the original BrewDog dog appearing alongside Mikkell. The more minimalistic feel of the label is a nod to the style of the Dane’s packaging, we still have some text to add to the front of the label (name, ABV, product of Scotland) but we are going to try hard to keep the simple minimal feel. The label also incorporates the cool vertical lines typical of a Mikkeller label, yet these lines are scuffed and in various blues, typical of a BrewDog label. The version of the label I am currently working on is for the US market so there is the big blank space top left for the mandatory US government health warning.

To get the initial visual we end up cutting out and sticking loads of early concepts and drafts to bottles to get the right visual feel for the development. Our office is full of mocked up prototype product packaging and labels and designs which did not make the final cut as well as visual concepts for new products. Once we have a rough visual for the beer, then it is a case of fine tuning it and writing the text for the product. I usually draw, write and scribble on loads of draft label sheets like the one in the image above as all the various bits of text for the packaging begins to take shape.

Obviously we have had to sample the beer allot over the last few days to check how it is maturing and ensure the packaging reflects the product. Unless you visit the brewery you are going to have to wait a little bit longer until you get to sample it.

I paired this beer with: Salmon filet steamed inside a foiled bag on top of fennel and leeks, then served on a bed of couscous topped with a dollop of cucumber yogurt dill sauce. Boy this was a very yummy dinner and paired well with this beer!!

Tasted on: Wednesday November 30, 2011

Notes: best by Dec 16 2014, So I could have kept this 3 more years!! Brewed at De Proef Brouwerij in Lochristi-Hufte, Belgium

This beer pours a cloudy light orange with a one finger off white head which left a thin lacing on my glass.

The nose on this brew was very mild and vague. There were hints of bread, some very mild hints of a wet horse blanket and a little medicinal, otherwise the nose was unremarkable.

The taste was also very mild or should I say short, as it went from the start to finish in record time! I got a very strong bready, malty and zesty spicy taste up front, then a mild bitterness near the end with nothing in between. There was nothing in this beer taste which would have suggested a “wild” side.

This beer had a thin to medium body with a low to medium level of carbonation..

The drinkability of this “Funky E” brew was very good overall and there was only a mild hint of the 9+% abv.

This beer is worth a try, but I was expecting more. Not sure if I had a bad bottle or not & it was a good beer, but I felt like something was missing 😦

Notes: This was brewed once on June 4th, 2008& was the 1st of the Stone Collaboration brews.

This beer pours a deep gold with a 1 finger head which dissipated quickly and left a thin lacing on my glass.

The nose had notes of lemon, spices, sweet malts/candi sugar and Belgian yeast.

The taste started off sweet from the malts and candi sugar, then was followed with spices like cloves and coriander and ended dry and bitter.

This beer had a crisp mild to medium mouthfeel with a low level of carbonation.

The drinkability was smooth and easy. Pour me another please.

On the Label: This is a story of how a collaboration brew with – IMO- two of the greatest breweries on this planet initially began with a “fizzy yellow beer.” It all started in Denmark in the late 09’s when a group of friends and I started going to a bar in our neighborhood that sold a bucket of imported beers. My first love was (yikes) an American fizzy yellow beer…..Well, things have changed since…. We learned that there was SO much more when we discovered American craft beer and we were soon to never touch the fizzy yellow stuff again! When American craft beer came to interest and with the birth of the first Danish microbreweries, so came the birth of my wanting to brew my own beer. I got together with Kristian (Keller) and we started brewing in our kitchen in 2003. As the beer scene progressed more and more US microbrews found their way to Denmark and we started downing beer from far away breweries such as Stone, AleSmith, Three Floyds, etc and they all blew our minds…….I Thought; what’s the heck is going on in Denmark??…why isn’t anybody brewing these kinds of ales? And so Mikkeller was born…It’s been a couple years now and things has moved faster than the speed of lightning. Ok let’s get to the case…why are you sitting here in with an ale brewed in friendly collaboration between two US and one Danish brewery in your hands?? Because the world is a small place and because I am one of the luckiest brewers on the planet. Since tasting the wonderful nectars of the US my dream has been to brew with some of the best brewers on the planet and this ale is the result of realizing this dream. It’s a result of a fizzy yellow eventually turning me into US beers and getting me turned into Stone and AleSmith. — Mikkel Bjergsø

From their website: Sure, we’re a bunch of Arrogant Bastards, but we humbly admit that we were inspired to start brewing by other fantastic breweries and homebrewers. There are a whole lot of fellow craft brewers who we respect and admire, and who we’ve wanted to collaborate with. So why just dream about it? Starting in 2008, we released a new series of collaboration beers. The goal was to get three brewers from three different breweries to put their heads together and have some fun with no regard for boundaries. No restrictions on fitting a beer into a lineup, using familiar ingredients, conforming to preconceived beer styles, using tested procedures in the brewing process or even affordability. Each of these beers is the result of three brewers coming together and doing what they love. Therefore, many of our collaborations include ridiculous amounts of decadent ingredients without regard for shelf price. And because our collaborations are usually only brewed once, they can be rather difficult to find, and once they run out—they run out. Consider yourself warned.

If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on these liquid tributes to the spirit of camaraderie, you’ll agree that the end result is worth it.

Region: This was Brewed & Bottled by Mikkeller at Brewdog, Aberdeen, Scotland

ABV: 9.75% Abv

How served: 11.2oz capped bottle poured into Stone IPA glass.

My Overall Opinion: Very Good.

I paired this beer with: Grilled Chicken. I.P.A. or D.I.P.A, doesn’t matter they both go well with grilled chicken.

Tasted on: Monday September 20th, 2010

Note: This beer poured a clear deep orange/copper color with a very large 3 finger fluffy head which almost ran over the top of the glass. The nose was mostly piney with some grapefruit and citrus notes. The taste was like the nose, piney, grapefruit rind and some mild herbal notes, with only a tad of malt sweetness which did not quiet down the bitterness of these hops. The mouthfeel was of a medium body with a nice level of carbonation. The drinkability is fairly good for an Imperial IPA, I could easily drink another as the 9.75%abv is hardly noticed.

On the Label:

From their website: I Beat yoU is a really hoppy IPA. It is brewed at BrewDog and the instruction for the Scotsmen was clear: we need shitloads of hops in this one! So be it. This is a hop bomb. Lots of bitter and aroma hops and alcohol and just a little bit of sweetness – just enough to provide response to the hops.

Like this:

Saturday night started out as 3 couples (my wife & I, my neighbor and another couple) who planned a mellow evening of grilling steak and drinking only a few beers. Well it turned out to become an impromptu tasting in which we had the opportunity to taste 13 different beers style from the 19 beers we went through that evening.

After 19 beers & 24 glasses

Here are almost all the bottles and all of the glassware 6 people went through on the evening. Having all those beers made cleaning the glasses a little easier.

I paired this beer with: Nothing, had it as an after dinner drink, but would have been perfect for brunch too!

Tasted on: Saturday June 12th, 2010.

Note: So I’m going to be tasting a beer made with weasel poop. Well not really the poop, but the coffee beans which were pooped out. Just hoping that the beans were cleaned 1st. The beer pours very thick and dark (maybe the beans weren’t cleaned 1st) leaving a thin dark tan head. The nose was all espresso and dark chocolate. The taste was of dark roasted coffee and dark chocolate and only a hint of the 10.9% abv. The mouth feel was thick, smooth and rich.

On the Label: This imperial Oatmeal stout is brewed with one of the world’s most expensive coffees, made from droppings of weasel-like civet cats. The fussy Southeast Asian animals only eat the best and ripest coffee berries. Enzymes in their digestive system help to break down the bean. Workers collect the bean-containing droppings for Civet or Weasel Coffee. The exceedingly rare Civet Coffee has a strong taste and an even stronger aroma. Brewed & Bottled By Mikkeller at Nøgne Ø, Grimstad, Norway.

On their Website: Brewed at Nøgne Ø, Grimstad, Norge.

This imperial Oatmeal stout is brewed with one of the world’s most expensive coffees, made from droppings of weasel-like civet cats. The fussy Southeast Asian animals only eat the best and ripest coffee berries. Enzymes in their digestive system help to break down the bean. Workers collect the bean-containing droppings for Civet or Weasel Coffee. The exceedingly rare Civet Coffee has a strong taste and an even stronger aroma.